6 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE Bad Blood (Results & Review)

2. Making Rhea Look Foolish

WWE has booked itself into an awkward spot with Liv Morgan and Rhea Ripley.

Ripley clearly is the dominant, superior wrestler who should be able to take her Women’s World Championship back in a fair fight, but Liv is highly entertaining as the smarmy heel champion with a boyfriend who will gleefully interfere on her behalf.

Then WWE books a match with Dominik Mysterio in a shark cage to seemingly take him out of the equation when everyone well knows he’s going to factor into the match somehow. But rather than Dom escaping, he fell out of the cage and inexplicably was hung upside-down by a chain conveniently fastened to his ankle.

Even if you put the contrived nature of that aside (because it was visually hilarious), what came next was just plain stupid. Rhea asked the referee (on camera) for leniency so she could abandon the match to wallop Mysterio with a kendo stick. Mind you, Ripley has gotten her hands on Dom a few times already, and she had Liv dead to rights in the ring, while Mysterio was literally not going anywhere.

Thus, Rhea looked like a babyface idiot bailing on winning the title she so desperately craved just to land a few kendo shots. That backfired when Raquel Rodriguez returned to attack Ripley – an attack that also was a botch because it happened in plain view of the ref, who had no choice but to call for a DQ. (It was pretty clearly a botch because the ref tried to turn away from Raquel, and she put Morgan on top of Ripley for a supposed pin.)

The idea was solid, but the execution was horrible. Fans in the arena seemed to love it though, so it’s hard to completely bash this match.